Musings of a Murtad

I was having breakfast in my serene world, unaware that zero-hour
had arrived. I went to my 9:30 math class, came back to my dorm
after the class was over, and checked online for the latest news and
upon scanning caught three words.

"World. Trade. Crashes."

"Hunh, the stock markets are crashing?" was my confused thought.

"Center," was the fourth unbelievable word that hit me.

I clicked the link and there on the page was a picture of one of
the twin towers crumbling.

"No."

I ran out to the main living room and turned on the TV. The twin
towers were no more.

I knew who was responsible. Every fiber in my body knew. It was
the scum who had declared war on Americans in 1996, and then
masterminded the attacks on the embassies in Africa two years later.
His group had attacked a US warship in Yemeni waters in 2000. I knew
that he wanted to showcase a grand attack. Perhaps, bombings of
multiple airliners over the Pacific and Atlantic or assaulting the
enclosed infidel sites in Saudi Arabia. Instead, Osama had struck at
the jugular of the American Republic.

Practically all the channels showed gruesome scenes and presented
scary scenarios. Some thought that there were more than 10,000 dead.
Others differed but still offered numbers in the thousands.

Students started to stream in the living room. They all watched
the horror without uttering a word. I left them and went to my room.
That morbid picture on the screen, in which so many innocent lives
were instantly extinguished, produced a feeling of emptiness.

I checked other websites and came upon a most wretched spectacle.
Palestinians were celebrating and passing around sweets. Their
euphoric performance made my stomach churn. How demented is a
society when it reacts with glee to thousands of innocents
perishing? I simply couldn't comprehend the depths of their
depravity.

As the day passed, my grief morphed into anger. Anger for those
who had carried out, supported, and financed the heinous acts, for
those who had rejoiced at the news of the atrocity, and for those
who were planning more assaults on the West. For too long the
Islamists had thought of Americans as cowards. For too long the
Americans had been at the receiving end of their attacks. For too
long the US had done little in response. For too long the majority
of the American public had not acknowledged their evil enemies.

At long last, at tremendous personal cost in blood and treasure,
the US was awake and furious.

The Fourth World War had begun.

* * * *

The immediate months after 9/11 were quite jarring. An economics
professor of ours told us to not believe "the official" version of
events. He hinted at some dark conspiracy without illuminating the
situation. Sometime later, on a different topic, he told us to not
pre-judge communist economies. I stopped listening to his Leftist
palaver after that.

Then there were the idiotic doom and gloom scenarios. For
example, thousands of American troops dying, millions of Afghanis
starving to death, and the war raging on for years and years. The
Ayatollah of the Left, Noam Chomsky, was always present to crown the
US as the leading terrorist state in the world. Yet, there was a
clear-cut choice. America plus the Allies were up against 7th
century woman-beating, gay-hating, liberty-crushing Islamists. After
the incredible victory of the American army in less than two months,
the credibility of the Left was in a quagmire. The overwhelming
majority of Leftists kept on spewing venom at the Americans.

Leftists were not alone. One day, I walked into the living room
where two guys were watching some news channel. The program was
about the merciless lampooning of Osama in every late night show.
One of the guys was very agitated.

"I understand why he makes fun of Osama all the time. It's
because he's a rotten stinking Jew. But I don't get why Leno jokes
about Osama so much?"

The other guy nodded. I was speechless. I don't know to whom he
charmingly referred to as "a rotten stinking Jew," though, I was
touched to hear him defend a mass-murdering psychopath. A few months
later, I would find the same guy laughing heartily at the President
Bush pretzel incident. It seemed that no amount of ridicule of the
Chimp-in-Chief was too much.

I found out later still that the guy was a member of the Muslim
Student Association.

From my experience, the reactions of the Muslims in Canada ranged
from indifference to outright support of Islamists. It made little
sense because these Muslims would never live in an environment with
harsh Islamist rules. It's uncanny how this attitude is shared by
most Leftists in the West who proclaim the superiority of Castro's
Cuba or in years past the Great Soviet Russia. Yet, all of them,
like most Muslims in the West, are leeches on the democratic
capitalist system.

* * * *

After finishing the exams, it was time for the December trip to
Saudi Arabia. As usual, on the flight to Saudi Arabia, the
passengers are provided Saudi customs cards. So, I started to fill
one out.

"First Name. Second Name. Third Name. Family Name." I filled out
the entries.

"Nationality." Pakistani.

Further along, checkboxes for "Single" and "Married." Single.

"Religion." I stopped.

"Religion." I had mindlessly filled out those forms on countless
occasions.

"Religion." Why was it so hard to write the same thing I had
written so many times before?

"Religion." Finally, I wrote down the usual answer: Islam.

The days that followed were unreal.

"The planes were remote controlled by the Americans. That's why
it was easy for them to be slammed into the buildings."

"They want to start a war to go after Afghanistan."

"How could Osama pull off 9/11? He is thousands of kilometers
away in Afghanistan."

"The US is the superpower, isn't it? So, how could supposedly 19
Arabs cause such havoc to such a super country?"

"The US wants to subjugate Muslims."

That's just what I heard from my family. The situation was not
much different in the newspapers and magazines. Every time the media
mentioned Osama in a story, the "who is blamed for 9/11 by
Washington" was not far behind.

I was reading through a Pakistani magazine where in the letters
section was this gem. "The attacks on 9/11, which we all know were
caused by Mossad,..." It was mind-numbing. The Muslim world simply
couldn't agree as to who was behind the 9/11 attacks when the plain
truth was staring them in the face.

Though, what they could all agree on was a sense of uninhibited
joy. Whether it was Americans, Israelis or the tooth fairy that was
behind 9/11, they didn't mind the auspicious atrocity.

My dad told us of a blue Saudi in his office.

"He was distressed because he wanted the twin towers to topple
sideways for more death and carnage."

I felt sick. The US, just a decade before, had sent half a
million of her finest to save the Saudis from imminent danger. On
9/11, the citadel of the US was attacked, thousands of innocents
were murdered, and the ingrate citizens of Arabia were delighted.

Many went a step further and defended the "innocent" Muslims of
Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia was one of three countries which not only
recognized the Taliban regime but also sympathized with it. The
attack on the pure Islamic state of Afghanistan was considered an
attack on Islam itself.

It seemed that with a few exceptions the entire Muslim world had
gone stark raving mad. Instead of opposing the evil regime of
Afghanistan, they openly supported it. There were women in Pakistan
who publicly supported the Taliban. That made about as much sense as
blacks in favor of the KKK. It felt like being in a lunatic asylum
where the US was attacking Muslims and the Taliban were gentle and
sinless creatures.

Many Muslims had supported Saddam against the US, more than a
decade before 9/11. Why? Because he's a Muslim! Again, the same
horrid logic was being used to defend the most wretched and wanted
man in the world.

* * * *

The West simply can't please the Muslim world. The Umma basically
manufacture reasons to hate the West. There's a conspiracy theory to
back up each and every grievance for loathing the West. The
infidels, in the minds of most Muslims, are out to destroy their
communities. However, their very Islamist rules cripple a
functioning society. Their one-and-only solutionTM to every
perceived problem is more Quran, more Islam, more aping of Muhammad,
more 7th century barbarism - in one word, Islamism. That was, and
is, by far the loudest force in the Muslim world.

Very few, very precious few, look at the US, and the West in
general, and say, "How about emulating those successful folks?" The
rest are shocked and ask, "You want the Great Satan and his minions
to be our role models!?" That is enough to shut up most liberals in
the Muslim world.

I had wondered about many questions that had gone unanswered.
After coming to North America, my life was on auto-pilot and I
hadn't given much thought to those questions. Then, 9/11 acted as a
catalyst. The Muslim mask of peace and tolerance was removed and the
hideous truth was in the open. No amount of evidence could convince
the Umma of America's innocence.

I left Saudi Arabia for Canada in January. I filled out the Saudi
customs card as same as before. The trip was long and arduous.

I walked in my dorm room and firmly shut the door. I was a Muslim
no more.

Isaac Schrödinger is a Pakistani ex-Muslim currently lives in Canada.
Here is his personal
blog.